A bill to replace Minnesota's derogatory geographic place names that are offensive to
Natives, including the "Rum River" name and thirteen other names, was introduced to the state
legislature by Rep. Mike Jaros on May 18, 2007. I [Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer] contacted
Rep. Jaros and presented him with a list of the derogatory names I wanted to change.
He then wrote a proposed bill to change the names. We then received approval from the
Minnesota Indian Affairs Council for Jaros to introduce the bill to the Minnesota legislature.
It was then introduced. A link to the bill is presented below.

Update: Rep. Jaros retired, a
new name-changing bill was going forward and was almost introduced in 2010. We are working
to eventually get a name-changing bill introduced and passed.

On April 30, 2012, Indian Country Today Media Network (ICTMN), the world's largest
Native news source,
published an article titled Students Hope Documentary Prompts Apology in Minnesota. Then, on the 1st day of May, ICTMN approved and posted
my submitted comment, the article's only
comment. It reads:

"On March 10, 2010, Minnesota Rep. Dean Urdahl introduced a house concurrent
resolution expressing regret for conflicts between Native Americans and European
settlers. It's a reconciliation resolution that is made up of mostly wording from the
draft resolution that I [Thomas Dahlheimer] wrote and Leonard E. Wabasha,
a Mdewakanton Dakota hereditary chief, supports. The resolution is located at http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/resolutions/ls86/0/HC0004.htm" A section of it reads: "...and derogatory
names were given to geographic places that were extremely disrespectful to native peoples;..."

On April 16, 2012, Arizona's largest state-wide daily newspaper, The Arizona Republic,
publish an article by Dennis Wagner. Mr. Wagner interviewed me for the article and quoted me in it. The article is titled, Tribes embrace native names to preserve culture; its subtitle is:
Return to original place names preserves cultures, fixes wrongs. The article is about
a national movement to preserve Native culture...by replacing derogatory
English place names, such as Squaw, Redskins, Savages, etc., with their (preferably) original
Native names and also restoring Native names to sacred
places. This same article is published on the
USA Today newspaper's website. At this website it is titled: ancient echoes: tribes embrace native names
.

The article includes a
segment titled, Translation of insults, in it there are three paragraphs
about my effort to change several Minnesota place names. "Snake River" and
"Rum River" where mentioned.

My effort to change the faulty-English-translation and insulting place
name ["Rum River"] is also an effort to return or restore the orginal sacred
Dakota/Lakota name [Wahkon] (sometimes spelled Wakan) to this river or sacred
Native place.

Wagner wrote: "Thomas Dahlheimer, a Minnesota activist, helped promote an unsuccessful
bill in his state that would have changed several place names,
including 'Snake River' and 'Rum River'."

Excerpts from an Indian Country Today Media Network newspaper article about a national movement
to replace offensive geographic place names throughout the United States are presented
below:

"South Dakota is not alone in its attempt to set a course toward eliminating names
that could and have offended many people. From Maine to California and points in
between, states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and many others have taken
steps to strip offensive names from road signs and maps."

In South Dakota, "Gov. Bill Janklow urged the State Affairs Committee to
introduce a bill that would change all offensive names in the state and a bill
that came through the Senate side will change only the word 'Squaw'."

In Minnesota a bill was passed to established an Act to change the names of all
geographic places named "Squaw". If a new Minnesota bill is introduce (and it includes all the
names that are on former Rep Jaros's bill) and it is
passed, all of Minnesota's derogatory geographic place names that are offensive to
Native Americans will be
changed.

You can find information about the mentioned above offensive names by clicking
the Minnesota Historical Society's following link:
reference

On the mentioned above Minnesota Historical Society website link there are
displays of historical information that reveal the sources of a number of offensive
geographic
place names. Examples are presented below.

An Example:
reference
...Click "R" and then scroll down to Rum River, and then click "Go", and then scroll
down to Mille Lacs County.

The name of Rum River, which Carver in 1766 and Pike in 1805 found in use by
English-speaking fur traders, was indirectly derived from the Dakota. Their
name of Mille Lacs, Mde Wakan, translated Spirit Lake, was given to its river
but was changed by the white men to the most common spirituous liquor brought
into the Northwest, rum, which brought misery and ruin, as Du Luth observed of
brandy, to many of the Indians. The map of Maj. Stephen H. Long's expedition in
1823 has these names, Spirit Lake and Rum River. Nicollet's map, published in
1843, has "Iskode Wabo or Rum R.," this name given by the Ojibwe but derived by
them from the white men's perversion of the ancient Dakota name Wakan, being in
more exact translation "Spirit Water."

Another Example:
reference
....Click "B" and then scroll down to Big Sioux Lake, and then click "Go".

The Little and Big Sioux Rivers, the latter forming the northwest boundary of
Iowa,
were named for the Dakota or Sioux, who inhabited this region. The name Sioux is the
terminal part of Nadouesioux, a term of hatred, meaning "snakes, enemies," which was
applied by the Ojibwe and other Algonquians to this people. Another
reference:
"'Sioux' is the name given this tribe ('Blackfoot Sioux') by the US Govt,
who got it from a bastardized version from the French, who shortened the Algonquin
compound, nadowe ('snake') plus siu ('little'), spelled Nadouessioux, by which a
neighboring tribe, the Ojibwa or the Ottawa, referred to the Lakota/Dakota/Nakota
people.
This term was meant as an insult, but today the Federal Government of the United States
has applied this name to represent this entire group of Souian people."

Another Example:
reference
...Click "S" and then scroll down to Savage Lake, and then click "Go".

New Canada has Silver Lake, adjoining North St. Paul, and Savage Lake in
sections
6 and 7, the latter being so named because "the Indians frequented its shores in
large numbers."

Redskin Lake..."Redskin" was the word used when European Americans were
murdering. They were collecting bounties with the severed ears, noses, pieces of
skin and scalp, from the bodies of Native Americans, pleasuring themselves with
the thrill of ethnic purging. The hunted "redskinned" animal was forced to run
before the tide of hatred. The goal was to exterminate the Native American. No
distinction was made between babies, children or adults, they were only seen for
their redskins.
reference

Another Example:
reference
...Click "D" and then scroll down to Devil Track Lake, and then click "Go".

"Devil Track River," wrote Gilfillan, "is Manido bimadagakowini zibi,
meaning the spirits (or God) walking-place-on-the-ice river." The Ojibwe applied
this name primarily to Devil Track Lake, and thence, according to their custom,
to the outflowing river. The name implies mystery or something supernatural about
the lake and its winter covering of ice, but without the supremely evil idea that
is given in the white men's translation.

Snake River gets its name from the Ojibwe word Kanabec, or snake, naming it
after their enemies, the Dakota, who lived upriver, and who they
later displaced.reference

Minnesota DNR information:
"White/Indian intervention played an important role in the settlement of the area by
white men. The French, instigated fights between the Ojibwe
and Dakota so as to ally themselves with the Ojibwe." reference

White people instigated fights or used the Ojibwe to force the Dakota from their sacred homeland
near the source of the river that is currently named "Snake" River.
They then translated the derogatory Ojibwe name for this river (Kanabec) into English,
it means snake. The white people then named the river Snake,
which is an indirect derogatory name.

Hockamin Creek "In a related vein is the native Algonquian word for the
Devil -- 'Hockomock'..." "Franzoni has found a total of ten places in the US
named "Hockomock," six in Maine, two in Massachusetts, one in New Jersey
(Hockamik), and one in Minnesota (Hockamin Creek). ... I first talked to
Hockomock-area residents and Native Americans about the meaning of the
name "Hockomock" to discover its link to the word "Devil."

In the native cosmogony there is no single evil spirit comparable to the devil.
In the mind of the settlers though, all this "heathen" spirituality had to be the
work or the sign of the devil. So the name Devil was given often to native areas
known formerly by names meaning Sacred or Spirit or Mystery." As is Minnesota's
Devil Track Lake and Devil Track River. The native Algonquian word
Hockamin means "evil spirit" and after white Christians came in contact with the
native Algonquians, the word Hockamin was sometimes used to refer to the devil.
Therefore, Minnesota's Hockamin Creek (Devil Creek) or (Evil Spirit Creek)
is also a profane name and should be give a new name.

Information about the wrongful use of the evil name Satan or Devil for
geographic places is presented below.
reference

The use of the evil name Satan or Devil for a geographic place is very
offensive.
"Mijares says it is profane to name a landmark after Satan. And he has taken his
fight all the way to the federal government."

"In October, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names will consider Mijares' proposal
to change the name of the 3,849-foot mountain to Mount Kawukum, a name Mijares
says is indigenous and means "laughing mountain, everywhere seen."

"Place names evoking the Devil reflect a dominant attitude on the part of
Euro-American settlers towards the New World during the migration into the
wild West. The history of place names is based in mistranslation, deliberate
insult and slur..., as well as a Christian notion
of the wilderness as the domain of the Devil."

Racial hatred was why many geographic places were given the name Devil:

"The origination of many of the Devils across the United States
probably
has more to do with racial hatred than anything else. Early white settlers were
mostly Christian and viewed Native Americans with their different spiritual practices
as heathens (at best) or savages and devil-worshipers (most likely). It's a long-
standing
tradition across time to demonize your foes prior to taking everything they have
,including their lives, to assuage any possible feelings of guilt."

"Native Americans saw spirits in many shapes and forms and though there was sometimes
a Supreme Being, goodness or badness or tricks flowed from a variety of sources. In
the simplistic Either/Or view of the early settlers, this mind-set of multiple
spiritual sources was tantamount to practicing deviltry, and so settlers tended
to put a malevolent spin on the landscape when interpreting native names for the
surrounding landscape."

"For example, Devil's Lake in Sauk County (Wisconson) is the white settlers'
interpretation of the Ho-Chunk name Day-wa-kun-chunk, meaning "Sacred Lake."

In the Encyclopedia of North American Indians there is an article titled: Place names.
reference
The following excerpt was take from this article.

"Manitou and Wakanda are common names on the map as Algonquian and Siouan terms
for the Great Spirit. Whites often changed these names to Devil, and so we have
Devil's Lake in Michigan, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and elsewhere."

A North Dakota Sisseton-Wahpeton Band of Isanti or Dakota "Indians" changed its name
from Devil's Lake Sioux Tribe to
Spirit Lake Sioux Tribe.

Articles about a Native American group's effort to rename a tower named Devil can
be found at both
reference
as well as at reference.
Note: This group's name is United Native America. It has a membership of 30,000
and its founder is Mark Graham. Mr. Graham has given his support for the effort to
rename Minnesota's "Rum" River.

In any case, writes Ed Quillen in the Fort Collins Weekly:
reference
"So, no matter what happens with Devils Tower in the future, the devil will still
adorn our maps. Out here, we seem more than willing to give the devil his due."

Let us not let the devil adorn our nation's geographic places and maps, we are not "one
nation under the devil" we are, as it says in the Pledge of Allegiance,
"one nation under God".

After we sent an e-mail to Roger L. Payne, the Executive Secretary of the U.S.
Board on Geographic Names, an e-mail wherein we presented both our Rum River
name-change web site as well as this proposed Minnesota House/Senate bill website
we received an e-mail from Mr. Payne, wherein he thanked us for the information
that we sent him.